I killed Piety before I switched to low life, but I did have the two skill points from killing her in reserve. I also a slightly leveled Blood Magic gem, so I decided to just see what combination of Auras was needed to qualify as low life since I hit level 35 in Lunaris and could equip the gem. I was actually punching numbers into a calculator to make sure I didn't accidently kill myself by activating something that reserved too much life. I very much reccomend the following calculator.
So, once I got onto low life without killing myself, I then started crafting my Redbeak swords to have three sockets each and Chroming them so that the sockets were useful. I also needed to use the two points from Piety to get extra strength and Ghost Reaver. Once I had done that, I felt compelled to try the build out, but wasn't confident in my survivability. I went back to Act II and finished the Fellshrine quests. Since I was one shotting everything in such low level content, I decided to run City of Sarn. I was pretty much one or two shotting everything there also, so I decided to give Docks a try. I wasn't one shotting things any longer, but I was usually getting one cast kills with Ball Lightning linked to Spell Echo.
I was clearing Docks so quickly, I ran it a few times to level to 37 so I could equip Zahndethus' Cassock. That caused some further equipment and aura changes as I had more ES from my gear, but my elemental resistances were pretty much garbage. I started running Purity of Elements instead of Discipline, which did cost me ES, but having the much improved chaos resistance gave me some piece of mind, but more on that later. You can't mindlessly face tank, but you kill things quickly enough that you usually just have to dodge a little bit of damange before your foes are dead.
Since I handled Docks, I went into the Ebony Baracks, and killed Gravicius again. It was really easy with as much damage as I do on low life. Then I ran into the Imperial Gardan intending to just get the waypoint. The Porcupine Goliaths were actually a bit scary when they died. Getting hit with two sets of quills at once does three to four hundred points of damage, not fun. However, retreating after firing a few Ball Lightning orbs into a pack seemed safe enough.
I really was going to quit after I got the Library Waypoint, but I found The Sceptre of God first, so I decided that Waypoint would work just as well. However, I found the stairs to the Upper Sceptre before I found the Waypoint. Along the way, I had devastated Caliga the Imperatrix with Lightning Tendrils linked in with Concentrated Effect. Between that and Pain Attunement, when Lightning Tendrils leveled it went from 1100 DPS to 1600 DPS. Even Act I bosses don't stand up to that kind of damage for long. The listed DPS on Ball Lightning is about 250, but since I'm using Spell Echo, most monsters get zapped about four times per cast, so it's pretty punishing as well.
Anyway, I decided to keep going up. You can guess what happened from here. I made it to Dominus, and decided to see how the fight would go. I breezed through the first set of three uniques. I started the fight by dropping a Flame Strike in the area they start in, and that did a massive amount of damage before I really started fighting.
When the second wave of minibosses spawned, Kali went down almost instantaneously, but Alal almost killed me. I had 59% chaos resistance, and needed every bit of it. I'm not sure what tiny little bit of life I had when she died, but it's was probably less than 50, maybe even less than 20. I probably hit a life potion just in time. After that Orcus went down very easily. I also had an easy time with Dominus. Normally fighting his is a matter of patiently shaving off health, but every time I caught him with Ball Lightning or even better, Lightning Tendrils, he lost major chunks of health. In his second form I did run through my portal once just because I didn't feel comfortable with the amount of ES I lost during a one of the bleed attacks. I might have been able to regenerate it by leeching, but didn't want to risk it. Once I had my flasks and ES refilled, I went back and quickly ended the fight with Lightning Tendrils.
A large portion of your safety in this build comes from killing things quickly. I probably should have done the Dominus fight as hybrid life and ES because of the chaos damage coming from Alal. However, other than that, the build feels pretty safe on low life otherwise. Usually a single dodge is enough to stay out of trouble. For example, the Rogue Exile witch with Minion Instability is usually a huge pain and very dangerous. I killed myself a few times in standard before realizing that I was dealing with Minion Instability. With this low life build, Ball Lightning kills the minions at a safe distance and the piercing nature of the spell means that I'm damaging the exile through her wall of minions.
Here's the skill tree I've got now. My next goals are to get the nodes to boost elemental resistance at the same time picking up ES and Evasion. I also want to transition over to Amathest rings so that my chaos resistance by the time I need to face the Weaver and Black Death in act II. To that same end, I'll probably try to pick up 1% Life Regen so that if I do take a bit of chaos damage, it starts regenerating immediately. I really haven't had this much fun in a while playing PoE, as the length of this post might suggest.
Skill Tree
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